Streetlight and Contrast

1/8/17

    Well, two awesome stories from this last week. The first was yesterday when Elder Triplett and I were biking home from church. There is this one streetlight near our house that doesn't change for a long time, so missing it is a super bummer. As we were approaching the intersection, we noticed that there was only 7 or 8 seconds left on the walk sign. Not wanting to miss the light, I yelled to my companion, "Full speed ahead!" We made it through the intersection before it even turned yellow, so then I yelled, "That streetlight isn't eating us for breakfast!!" Then a few seconds later: "Because it's Fast Sunday!!" Boom!! Triple pun!!! One, because it was actually Fast Sunday; two, because the streetlight wasn't eating us for breakfast; three, because we had just biked faster than the speed of sound.

    The other story is a little more substantive. It was a long day of finding on Saturday night, and nothing super interesting had happened. Elder Triplett started contacting this man walking down the sidewalk, and didn't understand what he was saying. I caught up, and then the man asked me, "Do you believe the members of the Godhead are the same being (你們相信三位一體嗎？)?" Naturally, I replied, "No, we believe they are three separate individual beings (我們相信三位三體)." The most grotesque look I have ever seen came across his face as he started yelling, "Get behind me Satan! Stop talking! Careful, Christ will strike you down! In the name of the Chinese government I command you to get away from me!!" Somewhere in the middle of that I tried to stammer out something about the way Jesus taught us to treat others but I was mostly just shocked. Who would've thought that such a small difference in doctrine would lead to such a deep and aggressive hatred of someone you had never met before. 

    The best part of this story is what happened next: we met a quiet, shy, 16-year-old boy who had met missionaries a year or so and had been reading the Book of Mormon ever since. Due to family opposition, however, he hadn't been able to continue to meet with missionaries or go to church. What a stark contrast! One older and one younger, one loud and quiet, one searching intently for peace and happiness while the other fumes and sputters down his narrow train track of stubbornness. Setting aside whose religion is true and whose is false and regardless of whether they accept or reject or message--someone learned something from us while the other didn't. There are many lessons to be learned from such an interesting contrast, but I want to be humble enough to learn from everyone: even those I disagree with. I love you guys, and I hope you have a great week!

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The Hot Topic:

Monday-- went to a Family Home Evening with the ward. Was supposed to have a lot of investigators and potentials there but ended up not having any... super bummer. I've started this cool thing lately where every morning I wake up, do 30 pushups, and set 3 goals that I will complete no matter what throughout the day. Learned how to say 'don't torture me' in Taiwanese. 

Tuesday-- zone meeting. We watched a two-hour broadcast that we had watched last January because most of the new missionaries haven't seen it. A little boring, but I still got some cool stuff out of it. Did the baptismal interview in the morning, and it went great. Went finding in the nighttime and nothing special happened. 

Wednesday-- went to visit the 1st councilor in the bishopric. His wife went off on a couple things and it ended up being a lot longer than we had hoped. English class at nighttime went really well, especially considering the fact that we had forgotten to plan anything for it...... I broke some robots during the day too. I call them robots. It is the people that work at restaurants or otherwise, and are so in to their job that everything they say is emotionless and they are just zoned out. To break robots, I say something completely out of context so that they laugh, smile, or at least come out of the robot zone for a few seconds and then go back until they get off work. It is actually really fun.

Thursday-- went on exchanges with the zone leaders, both of which I have been companions with before. Elder Stevenson and Elder James. I went with Elder James, and it was mostly a bunch of finding. We did, however, find an investigator that we thought lived in their area, but ended up living in our area and set a baptismal date!!! Super cool!!! At night met with the Deng Family, a financially unstable family of a mom and her two girls. Their father passed away a few years ago (did I mention this last week?), and so the daughter skipped college to make more money for the family. We met her, and now we are trying to share with the whole family. Shared the plan of salvation with her, but honestly she didn't act like it was that important to her.

Friday-- finished exchanges and did weekly planning, did a bunch of finding in the night time. Stopped by the Liang Family and said Hi at the door because they have been sick this last week so we haven't been able to meet with them (that's the family struggling with tea). 

Saturday-- baptism in the morning, did a temple tour with Sister Zeng and her little daughter Ken Ying, went home and did finding until we met with Lu Xiao An. He is a Jehovah's Witness that got in a car accident a few years ago, so half of his body is paralyzed and he has to wear a band around his head because he could faint at any time. In a coma for several months. Doctors didn't think he was going to make it through. He loves to talk and talked our ear off, but also listened to the Restoration. Super cool guy. Set a baptismal date, although we will have to see how much of what we said actually sunk in and whether or not he actually has interest. In the night we met with Jimmy (the guy who did a working holiday in Australia). Went pretty well, and we made it pretty clear that we wanted him to pray and see if it was true (surprisingly one of the biggest struggles of missionary work in Taiwan).

Sunday--church, ward council, updated records, and then went finding after dinner. Finding Sunday night was pretty rough, and we didn't see much success.